Five Amazing Things About Pandas, in Honor of Basi, Who Died This Week

On Wednesday, the oldest known giant panda died. Basi, who was 37, had been suffering from health problems since June, including cirrhosis and kidney failure, according to state-run news agency Xinhua News. A museum is being built in her honor—she was famous in China after she inspired the mascot for the Beijing Asian Games in 1990.

The species is no longer considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, but the wild population is still only about 1,850. Wild pandas live about 15 to 20 years, although zoo pandas do tend to live longer. But while panda genes are an incredibly valuable commodity, Basi never had cubs. The longest-lived panda on the books, Jia Jia, died at 38 years old.

In Basi's honor, here are five fun facts about giant pandas that you may not know.

While the bears charm humans easily, mating is a difficult affair, particularly in zoos. First of all, in the wild pandas live alone, so males have to travel in order to track down potential mates—and get the timing right because females are only fertile for a few days. Out of the handful of males that gather, only the most dominant one gets a chance to breed. And mating itself is logistically tricky: The female needs to be in precisely the right position because male pandas have extraordinarily small penises for an animal their size. Sex usually only lasts between 30 seconds and 5 minutes, although recently pandas in Chinese centers have been breaking records by going at it for as much as 18 minutes. Zoo pandas are often artificially inseminated as well as paired with males to try to increase the odds of cubs. Because female pandas display pregnancy-like behaviors, including decreased appetite and activity. This leads to weeks-long cubwatches, like the one that ended in disappointment Thursday at the Smithsonian National Zoo in D.C. When a cub is born, it's tiny and fragile, and if twins are born the mother usually abandons one.

Look at a panda's paw close up and you'll see five little paw pads nestled next to each other, plus one more on the side of its palm, like a thumb. But that's not actually an extra finger—instead, it's an outgrowth of a bone in the panda's wrist. The panda uses it to help grab onto all that bamboo it eats.

5. Giant pandas and red pandas are not related, at least not any more recently than 40 million years ago.